Hicks: Will Orson Scott Card's outspokenness affect 'Ender's Game'?

Orson Scott Card is a great science fiction writer. He's also a vocal opponent of gay marriage.

That has caused a stir among the LGBT community, some of whom started an online petition months ago (www.skipendersgame.com), urging people to boycott "Ender's Game," the new film adaptation of Card's best-selling, award-winning science-fiction novel.

Card has been open about his stance against gay marriage and what he sees as its negative effect on society. According to the Huffington Post, he's also compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and accused him of wanting to raise an army of young, unemployed urban men to "channel their violence against Obama's enemies."

OK. Sounds like someone has been reading too much science fiction.

This brings back a question I've often pondered: Do we judge art on its stand-alone merits, or does that judgment extend to the artist personally?

It's a fair question. Do we want to put money in the pockets of people who represent views with which we disagree? Or, in the case of Card, who has the ability and willingness to put that money into causes we might oppose?

On the flip side, how much scrutiny do we pay to the personal opinions of all artists we support, including the ones not as verbal as Card? How much time do we want to spend doing so? Do we need to do background checks on artists before experiencing their work? And does that extend to other products? I know that if I withheld my business from every company donating money to political candidates I don't like, or whose CEOs have views I don't care for, I likely would be living in a field somewhere, half-starved and freezing from not having any clothes to wear.

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That's not to say I don't draw a line. Everyone probably should. But where that line resides is, of course, a matter of personal choice.

For me, the problem is that while I couldn't disagree more with some of Card's opinions, those views aren't reflected in his work. At least not the work I've seen.

This isn't a movie glorifying gang violence or drug use, which I use only as examples because I can think of so many examples. This isn't a case of Jewish people seeing "The Passion of the Christ" and saying the film reflects the anti-Jewish standpoint of Mel Gibson (I didn't see that movie, so I have no opinion one way or another). The Jewish people derived from Gibson's work that he was pushing an agenda. In the same way, people who saw "The Last Temptation of Christ" believed Martin Scorsese was pushing an anti-Christian agenda.

To me, it depends on how much of what the artist represents personally is actually represented in his or her work. As a person who strongly supports gay marriage but has also enjoyed Card's books and gave a positive review to the film version of "Ender's Game," I have no problem supporting the two -- in this case. That's because I didn't see any of Card's views that I find objectionable reflected in his work.

There's also the question of personal rights. Card may believe that people shouldn't have the right to marry, and he has every right to believe that. Just as people who disagree with him have the right to enjoy his work or the right to boycott "Ender's Game."

The idea of reconciling an artist's views with his or her work can be a bit confusing. You want proof? Ask a liberal college film professor if D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" is a great film (the heroes are members of the Ku Klux Klan; the film, while hailed as a masterpiece in filmmaking, represents abhorrent racism that would be too much for me to ever pay to see. It crosses my line).

Back in February, Richard Brody of The New Yorker summed up the battle of conscience in a piece headlined "The Worst Thing About 'Birth of a Nation' Is How Good It Is."